Although ‘Meta-’ is used as an international pre!x, and ‘Icon’ is a common expres-sion for ‘image’ or ‘picture’, it is important to clarify the title and de!ne ‘Meta-Ikon’.‘Meta’ as well as ‘Ikon’ come from ancient Greek and implicate several meanings.In the context of this exhibition ‘Meta’ could best be translated as ‘a#er’, ‘about’, or‘beyond’. As such, ‘Meta-Ikon’ signi!es ‘a#er an image‘, ‘about an image’, or ‘beyondan image’. Simply said; this is not only a photograph created a#er an image, or there-working of an image, or something which leads beyond an image, but a photo-graph which unites all of these qualities.'e group-exhibition »Meta-Ikon« mainly presents photography as the domi-nant medium for recording and generating images, and as the contemporary appro-priation of the historically acknowledged cannon of images. Accordingly, the showis an arrangement of new statements that are not documenting reality, but refer toexisting images of Western Culture found in painting, photography, sculpture and!lm. Using di"erent strategies the artists transform the collective images/icons ofour cultural memory into new works of art.'e sources remain present within the selected works – it may be a directrecognition of the original motif, or something more elusive that resonates withcollective memory and is informed by the speci!c aesthetics of the viewer. Never-theless, the creation of unexpected hybrids such as ‘familiarly uncanny’ or ‘disor-dered cognition’, allows these works to exist in their own right (and not simply ascopies). 'e speci!c ‘access’ that each participating artist has to their chosen subjectimplants a new and lingering strangeness to the visual cannon of our familiar cul-ture. 'e exhibition visualizes how di"erences in content, concept and techniquecharacterize the speci!c ‘access’ of the participating artists. Each ‘access’ results inits own unique ‘Meta-Ikon’.